As of 2 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, Sandy was centered 425 miles south-southeast of New York City and rumbling along the Atlantic toward the mid-Atlantic states at 14 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center reported. The storm is blowing winds around 75 miles an hour.

On its current track, the storm should be centered on the coast of the mid-Atlantic states sometime tonight Eastern Time, the NHC reported. Gale-force winds are already blowing in coastal North Carolina all the way up to coastal New Jersey and should reach Long Island and southern New England later this morning.

Reuters

Louis Palmieri removes belongings from his home ahead of a mandatory evacuation before Hurricane Sandy in East Haven, Conn., on Sunday.

States of emergency have been declared in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia and North Carolina.

The storm system has been dubbed Frankenstorm by some meteorologists because of heightened concern that it will collide with a cold front moving eastward from the Midwest and a cold stream from Canada. The mixing of the three systems, which would likely create a hybrid super storm, is expected to occur around Halloween.

“Definitely, tens of millions will see effects from Sandy, and some of the heaviest effects will be, unfortunately, from I-95 eastward to the coastline,” including densely populated metro areas such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, said Alan Reppert, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com, on Saturday. Read: Hurricane Sandy: What homeowners need to know.

As Hurricane Sandy barreled north from the Caribbean — where it left at least 66 dead — to meet two other powerful storms, experts said it didn’t matter how strong the storm would be when it hit land: The rare hybrid storm that follows could wreak havoc over 800 miles, from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.

“This is not a coastal threat alone,” said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “This is a very large area.”

“There will be school closures, travel will be messed up for days and major airports will be closed,” said Henry Margusity, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, on Saturday. “This could be a disaster of biblical proportions —a multibillion-dollar disaster.”

The storm could bring in high winds and heavy rain to New York City that could make operating transit lines, tunnels and bridges dangerous. Nearly 15 million people live in a 5,000-square-mile area stretching from New York City through Long Island, southeastern New York state and Connecticut.

New Jersey prepares

On Saturday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency and urged residents not to brush off warnings from weather forecasters about the severity of the storm. He ordered mandatory evacuations in the state’s coastal areas, including the casino center Atlantic City, by late Sunday afternoon.

“We have to be prepared for the worst,” he said, adding that if the storm hits as hard as predicted, areas of the state could be without power for seven to 10 days. Newark, N.J.-based PSE&G
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started to bring in extra workers to handle any power outages. The company said it’s requested more than 1,300 linemen and 600 tree contractors from utilities in other states to assist its crews.

Parts of the Delmarva Peninsula, southern New Jersey, eastern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania could see more than eight inches of rain starting Sunday night through the heaviest rainfall on Monday night, said Reppert. Snow is projected to fall in the West Virginia mountains, he added.

Hurricane Sandy also forced schedule changes on the campaign trail, with time running out for candidates to drum up support before the general election on Nov. 6.

Vice President Joe Biden canceled Saturday plans to appear in Virginia Beach, Va., and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney decided not to hold a rally there on Sunday. President Barack Obama’s campaign switched his departure for Florida to Sunday night from Monday. He appeared in New Hampshire on Saturday.

Media reports say airlines have canceled thousands of flights in the U.S. northeast, creating havoc for fliers in the U.S. and world-wide. The northeast is a center for both U.S. and international flights.

Flightaware.com said that as of 6:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, some 6,800 flights had been canceled and that most airlines had suspended operations at New York metro, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia airports. See: Hurricane Sandy grounds flights.

Wall Street closes

Wall Street also braced for Hurricane Sandy, as leading U.S. stock exchanges said late Sunday that they will close for both floor and electronic trading Monday and possibly beyond, as a safety measure.

“We support the consensus of the markets and the regulatory community that the dangerous conditions developing as a result of Hurricane Sandy will make it extremely difficult to ensure the safety of our people and communities, and safety must be our first priority,” NYSE Euronext
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said in a statement on its website.

Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.
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and BATS also announced that stock and option trading would be closed Monday, and that the trading schedule for Tuesday would be confirmed later.

The stock exchanges had said earlier that they would close floor trading, but that electronic trading Monday would continue uninterrupted.

A statement by CME Group
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meanwhile, said the derivatives exchange will be closing its U.S. equity-index futures and options markets Monday on its trading floor and on the CME Globex trading platform.

Trading in those markets, which began at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, will continue until 9:15 a.m. Monday before closing, the company said in a statement on its website.

All other CME Group futures and options markets were slated to remain open. The CME had already said floor trade at its New York Mercantile Exchange will be closed Monday, with the Nymex market site located in an evacuation area. Read: U.S. stock exchanges to close Monday.

Last year, the Nasdaq and the NYSE operated even after Hurricane Irene shut down much of the region’s transportation infrastructure.

Meanwhile, all U.S. federal government offices in the Washington, D.C., area will be closed to the public Monday, with all nonemergency government employees granted excused absence, the Office of Personnel Management said Sunday afternoon.

Likewise, the D.C. area’s Metro train service will also be closed Monday, according to reports.

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